Common names

Taxonomic notes

Dacrydium × suprinii Nimsch 2007 is a natural hybrid between this species and D. guillauminii.

Description

Trees, commonly 3-6 m tall. Bark thick, scaly, rough, dark brown and slightly fibrous inside, more or less smooth with occasional lenticels on young trees, becoming gray with age. Branches spreading and open, later rising in a candelabra form. Branchlets short, thick, cylindrical. Juvenile leaves acicular, dense, curved, 12 mm long. Transitional leaves short and thick, 5-7 mm long (very similar to the adult leaves of Dacrydium balansae, but a little bit longer). Adult leaves develop gradually from the transitional leaves, scale-like, linear-oblong, about 3-5 mm long by 1-1.4 mm wide, densely overlapping in many rows, rigid, strongly curved, keeled beneath, blunt at the apex. Pollen cones terminal, often on short, lateral shoots, or laterally just below a terminal pollen cone, cylindrical, 9-18 mm long and 2.5-3 mm in diameter. Microsporophylls long, triangular, sharp with incurved apex. Seed cone terminal on short branches whose leaves are about 3 mm long and strongly curved. Cone bracts noticeably longer and straight on top of the cone, the apex slightly hooked, the entire cone becoming fleshy and red at maturity. Seeds 1-3, surrounded by the bracts, becoming erect and a little bit longer than the bracts which enclose them, oval but tapering off to a blunt apex, 4.5 mm long (Dallimore et al. 1967, de Laubenfels 1972).

Distribution and Ecology

New Caledonia. It is locally a dominant species in the vegetation on serpentine soils on the southern half of the main island from sea level to 1150 m above sea level (de Laubenfels 1972). Within its range, mean annual temperature is 21.2°C, with an average minimum in the coldest month of 14.2°C, and a mean annual precipitation of 1913 mm (Biffin et al. 2011, Table S5).

Collections, all before 1972 except as noted, have been reported from the following locations:

Massif de la Pourina near Yaté at an elevation of 300m above sea level (in 1993)